A whopping 46.57 per cent of the rural households in Karnataka do not own farmlands, according to the Socio Economic and Caste Census 2011 report which was released recently.
This perhaps explains why manual labour is the main source of income for 32.49 per cent of rural households while farming is the mainstay of 44.65 per cent families. As many as 2.88 per cent of rural households earn their livelihood by working as domestic help, 1.26 per cent depend on foraging and rag picking and 0.12 per cent beg to make ends meet, the report says.
According to the report, only 3.2 per cent of rural households in Karnataka own 7.5 acres or more extent of land. Even in the districts of Chikkamagaluru and Kodagu, which have a large number of coffee planters, the percentage of families having huge extent of land is low. In Chikkamagaluru, 4.08 per cent of households own land to the extent of 7.5 acres or more while in Kodagu, the percentage of such families is only 2.86.
Vijayapura district is an exception as 11.06 per cent of its households have 7.5 acres or more land. Only 0.42 per cent of families in villages of Bengaluru Urban district have 7.5 acres or more land.
While this is about farmland, 4,723 families in rural areas do not have residential houses, the report says. Interestingly, the report notes that 18.57 per cent families in rural areas are headed by women members. This accounts for 14,94,466 families.
